Overall, it's great that Aemond himself voiced who exactly was bullying him. And Aegon himself showed/said how he truly treated his brother from childhood.
Although it was always obvious to me.
We had a graphic scene in the brothel, but many always return to the pig scene, ignoring Aegon and focusing on Jace and Luke. Of course, they participated, but they were significantly younger and were Aegon's pawns. And they certainly weren't the instigators.
Although I don't think this will fully help some fans lol
saw a tweet going around from a HOTD glazer fan account saying "grrm needs to write an apology to the people of HOTD for what he said. the show has been incredible!"
and they were dead serious. LIKE I'm sorry but in what world should that man who MADE the story and material that was turned into a fucked up adaptation apologize??? excuse me??
in fact, i think GRRM should criticize the show more for what C&H did to his world.
That person is a fucking moron.
GRRM does not owe this shitshow an apology for objecting to what was done to his own work.
And yes, he has every right to criticize it more. C&H have profited from dismantling his world, flattening his characters, and selling the wreckage under his name. They should be the ones issuing a formal apology to him.
- Summary: A forbidden love survives in secret as war closes in.
- Pairing: targ!reader/Criston Cole
- Note: This one-shot is an alternate universe based exclusively on the worldbuilding, history, characterization, and political lore established in ASOIAF and F&B. It does not follow the altered canon, character interpretations, or fanon-driven plotlines created by HOTD.
- Rating: Explicit 18+ (adult content, age gap, blood and gore)
The histories would remember Criston Cole as Kingmaker, oathbreaker, butcher, Hand of the King, and the most dangerous son ever born to a steward. They would argue over what passed between him and Princess Rhaenyra, whether he had tempted her or refused her, whether his hatred grew from wounded pride or injured honor. Maesters would count the battles he won, the lords he condemned, and the corpses left behind wherever his white cloak appeared. They would write that he died beside the Gods Eye with three arrows in his flesh and no song granted to him. They would never write of you. They would not know what he whispered when there were no witnesses, how he held his daughter with the same scarred hands that had crowned a king, or how many times he stood outside your locked chamber pretending to be your gaoler because admitting himself your lover would have destroyed you both. No chronicle would record the little girl with silver-black curls who called him Ser Criston before servants and Papa when every door had been barred. History preferred great betrayals. It had little use for hidden tenderness, and none at all for the bastard daughter of a princess who refused, even under threat, to speak her father’s name.
You were born in 102 AC, five years after Rhaenyra and three before Queen Aemma’s final child tore the life from her. Your birth had been difficult enough to frighten your father and easy enough, by comparison with what followed, to be remembered as a blessing. King Viserys feasted the court for seven days. He placed a pale dragon egg beside your cradle, veined in red and warm as banked coals, and proclaimed that his youngest daughter had inherited her mother’s eyes. Queen Aemma named you herself. Rhaenyra, solemn with the importance of being five, had climbed onto the bed and inspected you with an expression more suited to a maester examining some rare and questionable creature. She touched your tiny fist, declared that you were too small, and then struck a wet nurse for suggesting she return to her own rooms without you. For the first years of your life, you belonged as much to Rhaenyra as you did to your parents. She dressed you in scraps of her old gowns, carried you through the Red Keep when she was forbidden to do so, and informed every visiting lord that you would be her lady companion once you learned not to chew ribbons. You remembered almost nothing of your mother except softness, the scent of rosewater, and a song whose words had disappeared long before the melody did. Your clearest memory of Aemma was not her face but her fingers moving through your hair while Rhaenyra lay curled at her other side. Then came blood, closed doors, a newborn prince who lived for less than a day, and a silence in your father that no feast could mend. You were three when the queen died. Rhaenyra was eight. Afterward, your sister stopped complaining whenever you crept into her bed.
The egg placed in your cradle hatched the following spring. Aegarax emerged amid smoke and fragments of blackened shell, long-necked and furious, with scales the color of storm clouds and wing membranes as dark red as old wine. His first act was to bite Grand Maester Runciter on the thumb. His second was to crawl beneath your blankets and coil against your legs, leaving three nursemaids shrieking and a scorch mark across the royal nursery. He grew lean rather than bulky, all whipcord muscle, hooked talons, and watchful golden eyes. Even as a young dragon he disliked confinement. Dragonkeepers learned to approach him from the front, never from behind, and never carrying the scent of another dragon upon their robes. He tolerated Rhaenyra because you loved her, though he hissed whenever Syrax came too near. He tolerated your father because Viserys always brought smoked mutton. Everyone else was judged according to standards known only to him. Criston Cole was the first man outside your blood whom Aegarax permitted to touch his snout.
You first saw Criston at the tourney at Maidenpool. You were too young to understand why the commons roared for a steward’s son in battered armor, but old enough to remember how he moved. He was not the richest knight in the lists, nor the most splendid. His shield bore no great lineage. His mail had been mended in several places, his horse was good without being remarkable, and there were men beneath silk pavilions who laughed at him before he entered the field. They ceased laughing after he knocked Dark Sister from Prince Daemon’s hand with his morningstar. By the end of the day, Criston Cole had beaten men whose ancestors had worn crowns when his own forebears were likely tilling hard soil beneath the Dornish Marches. His black hair clung damply to his brow when he removed his helm. His eyes were pale green, startling in a face browned by sun and war. He looked up toward the royal gallery only once. Rhaenyra was leaning over the rail, delighted, and you were beside her with both hands clamped around a carved wooden dragon.
“That one,” Rhaenyra told your father. “I want that one.”
Viserys laughed because he laughed easily in those days. “As a husband or a sworn shield?”
“As my shield. He is much too old to be my husband.”
Criston heard her. His mouth moved with the smallest hint of a smile, though he lowered his head before anyone could accuse him of insolence. Not long afterward, he wore white. Rhaenyra had chosen him over knights of greater lineage, and for years he repaid that favor with a devotion so complete it became one of the wonders of court. He followed her through the galleries, stood outside her chambers, accompanied her on hunts, and guarded the foot of the Iron Throne when she sat beside your father. The singers praised his courtesy. Young ladies invented reasons to cross the yard while he trained. Older lords resented the influence of a man with neither lands nor ancient name. To you, he was simply Ser Criston, the patient knight who found you hiding inside Rhaenyra’s wardrobe and did not betray you to the septa.
“Princesses are not meant to crawl through cupboards,” he said.
“You are not meant to find me.”
“That is my duty.”
“Your duty is Rhaenyra.”
His gaze shifted toward the door through which your sister had departed with Septa Marlow. “My duty is to the king and every member of his house.”
“Then you must not tell.”
Criston considered you with grave attention, as if concealing a child’s disobedience required the same judgment as commanding men at war. “What will you give me for my silence?”
You handed him the wooden dragon.
He accepted it. Years later, long after its green paint had worn away, you found it tucked inside the bottom of his travel chest.
Whatever occurred between Criston and Rhaenyra happened when you were still young enough to be dismissed from adult conversations but old enough to recognize that something had gone badly wrong. The court never agreed upon the truth. Some whispered that your sister had offered herself to him and been refused. Others claimed the knight had begged her to flee across the narrow sea, only to learn that the Realm’s Delight would not trade a crown for oranges and sellswords. You asked Rhaenyra once. Her expression became so cold that you did not ask again. You asked Criston years later and received no better answer.
“She loved you,” you said.
“No.”
“You loved her.”
His jaw tightened. “No.”
“You hate her with far too much effort for there to have been nothing.”
He looked at you then, and the truth lay in what he would not say. Whatever he had wanted from Rhaenyra, whatever she had asked of him, it had died without being buried. Its corpse poisoned everything that followed. He turned toward Queen Alicent and became her champion. At the tourney celebrating Rhaenyra’s marriage to Laenor Velaryon, Criston killed Ser Joffrey Lonmouth and left Ser Harwin Strong with a broken collarbone and shattered elbow. He did not batter Joffrey to death before a wedding feast, as some vulgar mummer’s tale might later claim. The death occurred in the melee, with blunted weapons that became murderous in the hands of men who understood how little bluntness mattered when enough strength drove the blow. Criston said it was a mischance of combat. Few believed him. Least of all your sister.
Rhaenyra withdrew to Dragonstone after the deaths of Laenor and Harwin Strong, and after taking Prince Daemon for her husband before either corpse had gone cold in memory. You meant to leave with her. Your trunks had been packed, your riding leathers laid across the bed, and Aegarax made ready at the Dragonpit. Rhaenyra sent a place for you aboard the ship carrying her household, though you intended to fly beside it. Your father forbade it before sunrise.
“I need one daughter who does not flee from me whenever the court becomes unpleasant,” Viserys told you. Age and rich food had thickened him, though his voice retained the warmth that made refusal sound almost reasonable. “Rhaenyra has her husband and children. You have obligations here.”
“What obligations?”
“We shall discuss a suitable marriage.”
“You have been discussing one since I flowered.”
“Then perhaps it is time we settled upon a name.”
“You promised I might go.”
“I said I would consider it.”
“You considered it until her ships were loaded.”
His face sagged. Viserys hated contention, especially when affection could be used to avoid it. He reached for your hand, but you drew it away. “Do not make this crueler than it is.”
“You are keeping me because Alicent wants someone of Aemma’s blood beneath her eye.”
His mouth hardened at that. “The queen has nothing to do with my decision.”
The lie hurt worse than the command. You left before grief could turn your anger childish. When you reached the outer yard, four royal guards stood across the gate. Criston waited in the center of them, his white cloak stirring in the sea wind.
“Move,” you told him.
“The king has ordered that you remain.”
“My dragon is waiting.”
“Aegarax has been returned to his cavern.”
Rage struck with such force that the courtyard blurred. “You had no right.”
“I obeyed your father.”
“You obey Alicent.”
His eyes narrowed, but he did not rise to the insult. “Go back inside, Princess.”
You had known him since childhood, yet that morning was the first time you hated him. “Did you enjoy doing this to my sister too?”
The barb landed. Nothing showed in his posture, though a pulse beat hard beneath his jaw. “Go back inside.”
Rhaenyra departed without you. Aegarax remained in the Dragonpit, restless and furious. Your father spoke of marriages for another year without selecting one. Alicent opposed every proposed husband who might have given you wealth, ships, or a defensible castle. She objected to a Redwyne because the Arbor commanded too great a fleet, to a Stark because the North was too remote, to a Royce because your Arryn blood might draw the Vale too tightly around you, and to a younger Baratheon because Storm’s End stood within an easy flight of Dragonstone. Viserys, weary of argument, postponed the matter each time. Only later did you understand that no match had ever been intended. A married princess could leave the Red Keep. An unwed daughter remained beneath her father’s authority, valuable to everyone and powerful nowhere.
Criston avoided you for half a year after the morning at the gate. When duty placed him in your presence, his courtesy was faultless and empty. He called you Princess. You called him Ser. He did not mention Rhaenyra, and you refused to acknowledge that you missed speaking to him. At one-and-twenty, you were no longer the child he had discovered inside a wardrobe. Men watched you at feasts now. They praised your silver-gold hair, your violet eyes, your resemblance to Aemma Arryn, and the dragon that made marriage to you both tempting and dangerous. None of them interested you. Lords’ sons spoke as though every sentence had been rehearsed with their fathers. Knights boasted of battles fought by other men. Courtiers looked at you and saw proximity to the Iron Throne, a dragon, a womb, or an offense waiting to be exploited. Criston looked at you as though you were an opponent whose next movement mattered.
The silence broke in the training yard on a rain-soaked afternoon. You had dismissed your ladies and taken a practice sword from the rack, intending to exhaust the temper that had plagued you since Rhaenyra’s departure. Criston found you striking a wooden post hard enough to blister both palms.
“Your grip is wrong,” he said.
“You have spent six moons refusing to speak to me. Do not begin with criticism.”
“The sword does not care whether you are offended.”
“Neither do you.”
“No.”
You swung at the post again. Criston caught the blade in one gloved hand before it landed. Even blunted steel should have cut through leather. He closed his fingers around it without flinching.
“Release it.”
“When you hold it properly.”
“I know how to hold a sword.”
“You hold it like a prince in a tapestry.”
You tried to pull the weapon free. He did not move. Rain slid from his black hair and collected along his lashes. His white cloak was soaked through, heavy against his shoulders. You hated the emblem more every time you saw it.
“Perhaps I should ask Ser Harwin how to improve,” you said. “If your lessons are anything like your tourneys, I am certain he remembers them.”
Criston tore the sword from your grip and threw it aside. It clattered across the stones. “Do not speak of matters you do not understand.”
“You never explain them.”
“I owe you no explanations.”
“No. You owe me nothing. Not even the truth.”
“You want the truth?” He stepped closer. “Your sister believes the world was made to answer her desires. Your father indulged that belief until the realm began splitting beneath his feet. Every man who warned him was called grasping. Every law that displeased her became an insult. She wants the rights of an heir and the freedoms of a prince, with none of the judgments either must bear.”
“You sound like Alicent.”
“Perhaps the queen sees what you refuse to.”
“And what do you see when you look at me?”
The question stopped him. Rain struck the flagstones between you. Somewhere beyond the wall, thunder rolled above Blackwater Bay.
Criston should have given a safe answer. He should have said he saw the king’s daughter, the princess he was sworn to protect, or another spoiled Targaryen who believed consequence was meant for lesser blood. Instead, he looked at your wet hair, your blistered hands, and the anger that had brought color into your cheeks.
“Something I ought not,” he said.
He turned away. You caught his cloak before he could leave.
Criston went still.
The white wool twisted around your fingers. “Then look again.”
He faced you slowly. For a heartbeat neither of you moved. His hand came up, hesitated beside your cheek, and dropped before he touched you.
“You do not know what you are asking.”
“I am not asking anything.”
“That makes it worse.”
“You have broken men for less than the way you have spoken to me.”
“You are welcome to summon the king.”
“And tell him what?”
His laugh contained no amusement. “Exactly.”
The first kiss was almost an act of anger. He seized the back of your neck and brought his mouth to yours with none of the courtly restraint for which he was praised. Rain chilled your skin, but he was warm beneath wet mail and boiled leather. His lips parted yours. You tasted rainwater and the bitter ale he had taken with his midday meal. Your fingers tightened in his cloak as if hauling down a banner from a captured wall. Criston kissed you once, deeply enough to strip thought from your mind, then wrenched himself away.
“No,” he said.
You had not spoken.
“This does not happen.”
“It already has.”
“No one can know.”
“Are you ordering me?”
“I am trying to save your life.”
“My life was decided before I learned to speak. Do not pretend another cage is salvation.”
His expression changed. The anger remained, but something more dangerous emerged beneath it. Desire was not gentle in Criston. He distrusted it too much. He approached every weakness as something to master, and discovering one that wore your face offended him.
“Go inside,” he said.
You picked up the discarded practice sword. “Coward.”
His gaze followed you across the yard. He did not deny it.
For eight days he kept away. On the ninth, he came to your chamber after midnight through a narrow stair once used by servants carrying wood to Queen Alysanne’s apartments. You had never told him the door would be unbarred. He had never promised to come. Yet you were awake when the latch lifted. Criston entered without his cloak, dressed in dark wool with a dagger at his hip. He closed the door and stood listening until the footsteps of the watch faded down the gallery.
“You should not be here,” you whispered.
“You called me a coward.”
“That was more than a week ago.”
“I considered the accusation.”
“And?”
“It was true.”
You crossed the chamber barefoot. One lamp burned beside the bed, gilding half his face and leaving the other in shadow. “What changed?”
“Nothing.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No answer would satisfy you.”
“Try me.”
Criston drew a slow breath. “I have spent years watching men take whatever they wish and name the taking their right. Princes, lords, heirs, kings. I despised them for it. I swore vows because vows made a man more than his hungers.”
“And now?”
“Now I know hunger can wear down anything.”
He touched you at last. His thumb moved over your lower lip, careful where the kiss in the yard had been punishing. The gentleness undid you more thoroughly. You leaned into his palm. Criston closed his eyes for a moment, as though even that small trust caused pain.
“If I ask you to leave,” you said, “will you?”
“Yes.”
It was a lie. You both knew it.
You kissed him before fear could restore his discipline. This time he did not stop. He caught you around the waist, lifting you against him while your arms circled his neck. His dagger struck the edge of a table. The sound made both of you freeze. When no alarm followed, he carried you to the bed and set you upon its edge. Every movement afterward held the tension of a drawn bow. He unlaced your nightgown slowly, watching your face as the linen slipped from one shoulder and then the other. You untied his dark doublet with less patience. Beneath it, his body bore the record of the life he had lived before white silk disguised him as a figure from a song. A pale ridge crossed his ribs. Another scar, round and puckered, marked the place beneath his collarbone where a spear had once entered. His hands were rough with calluses. One knuckle had healed crooked. Nothing about him resembled the smooth young lords who perfumed themselves for court.
“You are staring,” he murmured.
“So do men when I enter a hall.”
“I am not those men.”
“No. They would have spent half the night telling me how fortunate I was.”
His mouth curved faintly. “You are fortunate. I am told I was very handsome as a boy”
“You were two-and-twenty when I first saw you.”
“Then you cannot contradict me.”
The quiet humor vanished when you kissed the scar beneath his collarbone. Criston’s fingers moved into your hair. His breathing deepened, and the hand at your waist pressed harder. He laid you back among the covers with an unexpected care that made the danger of him more intimate, not less. He kissed your throat, your breasts, the hollow beneath your ribs, learning you with the concentration he brought to combat. When your body tensed, he slowed. When you pulled him closer, restraint began to fracture. You had expected urgency, perhaps even roughness, because so much in him existed beneath rigid control. Instead, he treated every breath you gave him as a secret entrusted to his keeping. By the time he settled between your thighs, your hands were trembling against his shoulders.
“Look at me,” he said.
You did.
“If you want me to stop, say it.”
“I will not.”
“You cannot know that.”
“I know you have talked enough.”
A low sound left him, part laugh and part surrender. When he entered you, pain flared briefly beneath the pleasure. He held still, his brow touching yours, and waited until your body eased around him. Nothing in the songs had prepared you for the heat of him, the weight, or the strange vulnerability of having a man renowned for violence trembling because you had drawn him close. You wrapped your legs around his hips. His discipline lasted three more breaths. Then he began to move.
He covered your mouth when pleasure made you cry out, not harshly, but from necessity. Servants slept beyond two doors. Kingsguards walked the gallery. Your father occupied chambers in the same castle. Every stroke carried ruin within it. Criston’s hand remained over your lips while his gaze held yours, pale eyes darkened almost black in the lamplight. You bit his palm when release seized you. He followed with his face buried against your neck, holding himself silent through force that left both of you shaking. For a long while afterward, he did not move. His body remained curved over yours as if he could shield you from the consequences by refusing to let the world return.
At last you whispered, “Your vows.”
“I know.”
“Do you regret it?”
Criston lifted his head. Sweat dampened his hair at the temples. “Ask me when I have enough honor left to answer.”
He stayed until the first birds began calling from the rookery. Before he left, you fastened his doublet and smoothed the dark cloth across his chest. There was no white cloak for you to return to his shoulders. He had left it folded in his chamber, as if sin became less real when committed outside the garment that named him.
“This cannot happen again,” he said.
“You said that after the yard.”
“This time I mean it.”
“So did you then.”
He looked down at you with an exasperation that concealed fear. “You are impossible.”
“I am a dragon’s daughter.”
“So is your sister.”
“You came to the wrong chamber if you meant to insult me.”
Criston caught your chin and kissed you once more. “Lock the door behind me.”
The relationship lasted nearly five years.
It survived because the Red Keep had been built by a suspicious king and finished by another who enjoyed secrets. Passageways ran between walls. Stairs ended behind tapestries. Narrow galleries allowed unseen listeners to stand between chambers and hear confessions never meant for them. Maegor had killed the builders who knew every hidden way, but stone remembered even when men did not. Criston knew the castle better than most because guarding it required knowledge of every weakness. He used those same weaknesses to reach you. Some nights he came before midnight. Other times months passed without privacy. You met in disused apartments, a locked armory, a bathing chamber beneath the royal sept, and once within the Dragonpit after the keepers had withdrawn. Aegarax watched Criston approach across the cavern floor, smoke leaking from his nostrils. You warned the knight to remain still. Criston ignored you and extended one bare hand. The dragon lowered his vast grey head, inhaled, and allowed Criston’s fingers to rest between the ridges above his nose.
“He knows,” you said.
Criston glanced toward you. “About us?”
“He knows everything I feel.”
“That is not comforting.”
“You smell afraid.”
“I am standing beneath a dragon’s teeth.”
“You were less frightened in my bed.”
“I have never seen you swallow a goat whole.”
Aegarax huffed smoke into his face. Criston coughed, and you laughed until the cavern returned the sound in rolling echoes. For years afterward, whenever you accused him of possessing no humor, he reminded you that he had once entertained both a princess and a dragon at considerable risk to his dignity.
You learned the boundaries of the man beyond the cloak. Criston slept lightly and woke reaching for a weapon. He disliked sweet wine, singers, and men who boasted of tourneys as if painted shields were proof of courage. He sent much of his Kingsguard stipend to his father at Blackhaven, though he never spoke of it. He could read, but slowly, tracing difficult lines with a scarred finger when he believed himself alone. He kept his possessions ordered with military severity. He had no patience for needless cruelty, yet possessed a frightening talent for necessary cruelty and a flexible notion of what necessity allowed. He believed Rhaenyra’s sons by Laenor Velaryon were bastards. He believed their existence was an insult to law, succession, and every man expected to pretend not to see what stood before him. When you pointed out the hypocrisy of those words while lying naked beside him, he rose and dressed without speaking.
“You think our child would be different?” you called after him, though there was no child yet. “Would your seed become lawful merely because it was planted in a daughter of the king?”
Criston stopped with his hand on the door. “There is no child.”
“That was not my question.”
“No,” he said. “It would not be different.”
He left. You did not see him alone for six weeks.
Love did not make either of you kinder. It provided new places to wound. You defended Rhaenyra even when you knew your sister could be vain, vindictive, and careless of those beneath her. Criston defended Alicent’s sons even when Aegon pinched serving girls, drank beyond reason, and fathered bastards throughout the city. You accused him of dressing ambition in righteousness. He accused you of believing blood excused every failing. Arguments ended with doors closing, oaths muttered against each other’s mouths, or long silences during which both of you waited for the other to yield. Neither did. He returned because he could not remain away. You received him because the rest of your life belonged to the crown, the king, and the designs of men who discussed your future across tables. Criston was the only choice you made entirely for yourself, even if it was the choice most likely to destroy you.
You knew you carried his child before the maester confirmed it. Your moon’s blood failed to come. Food smelled wrong. Aegarax became agitated whenever anyone approached you, snapping at dragonkeepers he had tolerated for years. You summoned Criston after midnight and found him waiting behind the tapestry before you reached the hidden door.
“What has happened?” he asked. “Your message said it could not wait.”
“I am with child.”
Criston did not move. His face emptied so completely that for one terrible moment you believed he felt nothing.
“Say something.”
“How certain?”
“Certain enough.”
“Has a maester seen you?”
“Not yet.”
“Who knows?”
“My maid suspects. No one else.”
He paced once across the narrow chamber. The room had belonged to a dead septon and still smelled faintly of dust and old incense. “There are ways to end it.”
Your hand struck his face before you decided to move.
Criston accepted the blow. A red mark spread across his cheek. “I did not say you must.”
“You thought it.”
“I am thinking of what they will do to you.”
“And to you.”
“That is not important.”
“It is to me.”
“If the king learns I broke my vows with his daughter, the Wall will be mercy. Alicent may demand my head before your father finishes deciding whether to pardon me.”
“Then I will not name you.”
“They will question every guard, servant, and knight who has come near your chambers.”
“I will tell them the father is dead.”
“And when the child is born with black hair?”
“Half the realm has black hair.”
“And my face?”
You hated that he was right. Criston came closer but did not touch you. “Leave. Go to Dragonstone before your belly shows. Rhaenyra will protect you.”
“You stopped me once.”
“I was obeying the king.”
“And now?”
“Now I am asking you to disobey him.”
“With your child inside me, while you remain here serving the woman who has spent years working against my sister?”
Pain flickered across his face and hardened into anger. “Do you want me to desert?”
“I want you to tell me that we matter more than that damned cloak.”
He looked toward the door, though the white garment was hidden on the other side. “If I leave, suspicion follows us. Rhaenyra will demand the truth. Daemon will learn it. Do you think he will suffer the man he hates to live beside his wife’s sister?”
“Then we cross the narrow sea.”
“And spend our lives watching every harbor for hired knives?”
“Men do live outside Westeros, Criston.”
“Princes do not stop being princes because they sail east.”
“You mean you cannot bear to stop being Ser Criston Cole.”
His voice fell. “And you cannot bear to stop being a princess.”
The accusation cut because some part of it was true. You had dreamed of freedom without understanding poverty, exile, or the humiliation of selling jewels to afford another month in a foreign city. Criston knew hunger and dependence in ways you never would. Yet he also knew what it meant for men to bow when he entered, for a queen to trust his sword, and for highborn lords to conceal their resentment behind courtesy. Neither of you was willing to surrender everything. The child would pay for that failure.
He knelt before you. Criston had knelt to kings, queens, and altars, but never like this. He pressed his forehead against your stomach, still flat beneath your gown. His hands closed around your hips.
“I am sorry,” he said.
“For the child?”
“For being afraid.”
You placed your fingers in his hair. “So am I.”
The court discovered your pregnancy before the fourth moon. Viserys summoned you privately. Alicent was already seated beside him, green silk immaculate, her expression composed. The king looked old in a way you had not permitted yourself to notice. His cheeks sagged beneath his eyes, and pain had settled into the lines around his mouth. He dismissed the maesters, servants, and guards. Criston remained outside the door. You could feel his presence as surely as Aegarax’s heat beneath the Hill of Rhaenys.
“Who?” Viserys asked.
You had prepared lies, but the sight of your father stripped them away. “I will not say.”
His fist struck the arm of his chair. “You will.”
“No.”
Alicent watched without interruption.
“Is he married?”
“No.”
“A knight?”
You said nothing.
“A lord?”
Silence.
“Did he force you?”
“No.”
“Then why protect him?”
“Because his name is mine to keep.”
Viserys rose too quickly and nearly fell. Alicent steadied him, her hand closing around his arm. The king tore himself free.
“I gave you every comfort,” he said. “Every indulgence. You shame your mother’s memory beneath my own roof.”
The words struck more brutally than any blow. “Mother’s memory has been used to shame both her daughters whenever we cease pleasing you.”
Alicent inhaled softly.
Viserys stared as if he did not recognize you. “Get out.”
You turned toward the door.
“This child will not carry the name Targaryen,” he called after you. “Do you understand?”
You looked back. “The child will have my blood whether you grant a name or not.”
Criston stood in the gallery when you emerged. His face revealed nothing. Only his left hand betrayed him, clenched so tightly at his side that blood marked his palm where his nails had broken the skin. He could not comfort you. Alicent came through the door moments later and would have seen. He bowed as you passed.
Your daughter was born during a summer storm in 126 AC. The labor lasted most of a day and half the night. Viserys did not come. Alicent sent a septa to ensure the babe lived and to search for any mark that might expose her father. Criston guarded the outer door because the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard could do so without causing comment. He heard every cry. Later he told you that no battlefield had ever made him feel so helpless.
You named the child Daella, for the grandmother you had never known and the Arryn blood that the court preferred to forget. She entered the world furious, red-faced, and loud enough to frighten ravens from the window ledge. Damp curls clung to her head, too dark to be called Targaryen silver and too pale to be wholly black. When her eyes opened, they were grey-green around the pupils, with a thin ring of violet near the edge.
The midwife crossed herself.
“Unusual eyes,” Alicent’s septa remarked.
“Arryn eyes,” you answered.
The babe was entered into the court rolls as Daella Waters, natural daughter of Princess Y/N Targaryen by an unnamed father. Viserys refused to see her for three moons. When at last you placed Daella in his arms, she caught his thumb and would not release it. Your father wept. He never legitimized her, but he ordered that she be raised within the Red Keep and granted the courtesies due to a royal bastard. It was his customary compromise: affection without courage, protection without public defiance.
Criston first held his daughter six nights after her birth. He came through the hidden stair near dawn, pale from exhaustion and rigid with fear. You were propped against pillows, Daella asleep beside you in a cradle carved with falcons and dragons. Criston stood over her for so long that you began to wonder if he intended to leave without touching her.
“She will not break,” you said.
“I know.”
“You look unconvinced.”
“I have never held one so small.”
“Then sit.”
He obeyed. You lifted Daella and placed her in his arms. Criston held her as if someone had passed him a vessel filled to the rim with wildfire. His hands, capable of swinging a morningstar through plate, seemed absurdly large beneath her body. Daella stirred, opened her strange violet-green eyes, and stared at him. Criston stared back.
“She knows you,” you whispered.
“No, she does not.”
“She heard your voice before she was born.”
His thumb moved over the dark silk of her hair. “That seems unlikely.”
“You may argue with the maesters once you have finished arguing with me.”
The child yawned. Her tiny fist closed around the edge of his sleeve.
Criston bowed his head. You saw the moment his composure failed. He made no sound, but tears gathered beneath his lashes. One escaped and struck Daella’s blanket. He wiped it away quickly, ashamed even before you.
“I have nothing to give her,” he said.
“You gave her life.”
“A name would be more useful.”
“She has mine.”
“She has Waters.”
“She has Targaryen blood, Arryn blood, and the blood of a man who made half the realm learn his name without inheriting so much as a ruined tower. That is enough for any child.”
He looked toward you. “You should not speak well of me. It encourages sin.”
“You entered by a hidden stair to hold your bastard daughter. I think encouragement is no longer the problem.”
Daella called him Papa for the first time when she was two. Criston had been teaching her to balance on the edge of a carpet, pretending it was a castle wall. She took three uncertain steps, fell against his knee, and announced the word with perfect clarity. He froze. You did not breathe.
“Ser,” you corrected gently. “He is Ser Criston.”
“Papa,” Daella insisted, patting the white cloth across his thigh.
Criston caught her hand. “Only here.”
She smiled because she understood nothing except that she had pleased him.
“Only when the doors are locked,” you told her.
“Locked,” Daella repeated.
It became a game to her. Before speaking the forbidden word, she ran to every door and pushed it closed. She never understood why Criston’s eyes followed her with such grief.
Alicent knew. You were never certain when suspicion became certainty, but the queen missed little that concerned her household. Perhaps a servant saw Criston emerge from the wrong passage. Perhaps she noticed Daella’s eyes, or the way the Lord Commander positioned himself whenever the child entered a crowded hall. She revealed her knowledge on an autumn evening when Daella was nearly three.
“You have shown remarkable loyalty by guarding the father’s identity,” Alicent said as her women fitted pearls into her hair.
You stood beside the hearth, forced into attendance at the queen’s invitation. “There is no loyalty in refusing to feed court gossip.”
“Names are not always necessary. Faces can be eloquent.”
Your blood chilled.
Alicent dismissed her women. When the door closed, she studied you through the mirror. At forty, the queen remained handsome. Motherhood and ambition had refined rather than diminished her beauty. “Do not look so frightened. If I intended to expose him, I would have done so before now.”
“You know nothing.”
“I know the man’s attention strays toward your daughter whenever he believes himself unwatched. I know he volunteered to guard your door during the birth and refused relief for eighteen hours. I know Daella Waters has his eyes.”
You forced your hands to remain still. “What do you want?”
“Nothing today.”
“And tomorrow?”
“That depends upon your sister.”
There it was. Not outrage, not piety, not disgust over broken vows. Usefulness. Alicent had found a chain stronger than iron and wrapped it around all three of you.
“If you harm Daella,” you said, “Aegarax will turn this castle into her funeral pyre.”
“Then you had best ensure the child remains useful alive.”
From that day onward, you understood your true place in the Red Keep. You were not merely an unmarried princess delayed by your father’s indecision. You were a hostage whose cage happened to contain silk gowns, servants, and gardens. Daella was leverage against you. You were leverage against Criston. Both of you could be raised before Rhaenyra as proof that the Greens held Aemma’s younger daughter and a dragon within their grasp. Aegarax remained beneath the Dragonpit, his chain shortened under the pretense that he had become unruly. Each time you visited, he pressed his forehead against yours and flooded the cavern with smoke.
Viserys died in the third moon of 129 AC while King’s Landing slept beneath cold rain. The bells did not ring. The doors to his chambers were sealed, servants confined, and ravens forbidden from leaving the rookery. You learned of it from silence. Breakfast did not arrive. The guards outside your rooms doubled. Daella asked why no one would take her to the yard.
Criston came after dusk. He entered openly in his white armor and cloak, accompanied by four guards in Hightower green.
“My father is dead,” you said.
He did not answer.
“How long?”
“Since last night.”
“And Rhaenyra has not been told.”
The guards heard everything. Criston’s face remained impassive. “You and the child will remain in these rooms until the succession is settled.”
“The succession was settled twenty-four years ago.”
“Do not do this here.”
“Where would you prefer I do it, Lord Commander? Before Aegon while you place my father’s crown upon his head?”
Something flared behind his eyes. “Take care.”
“You allowed his corpse to rot so Alicent could steal my sister’s throne.”
“I said take care.”
Daella emerged from the bedchamber clutching a carved horse. She saw Criston and began to smile, but your expression warned her. The child stopped before speaking.
“Why are there men outside?” she asked.
“To keep you safe,” Criston replied.
“From what?”
He looked at you. “From what comes next.”
That night you attempted to flee. Your maid bribed a kitchen boy to open the lower passage. You dressed Daella in a stable hand’s rough tunic, hid your silver hair beneath a brown hood, and carried her through cellars stinking of wet stone and onions. If you could reach the Dragonpit, Aegarax would take you to Dragonstone before the city gates opened. Rhaenyra would know the truth before Aegon could be crowned.
Criston waited at the end of the passage.
He stood alone beneath a smoking torch, armored from throat to heel. His white cloak filled the narrow way behind him.
“Move,” you said.
“No.”
“I will not ask twice.”
“You will not reach the Dragonpit. The city watch has sealed the hill.”
“On whose order?”
“Mine.”
Daella clung to your neck. Beneath the hood, her eyes moved between you.
“You knew I would try.”
“I know you.”
“You know nothing about me if you believe I will kneel to Aegon.”
“I do not need you to kneel. I need you alive.”
“For Alicent to display in chains?”
“For our daughter to keep her mother.”
The word our changed the air. Daella heard it. Her little brow furrowed.
You lowered your voice. “Come with us.”
Criston’s face tightened.
“Aegarax can carry three,” you continued. “We fly to Dragonstone. Tell Rhaenyra what happened inside the council chamber. Tell her how long they hid our father’s death. Whatever passed between you years ago, she may spare you for bringing warning.”
“Daemon will have my head before we land.”
“I will not allow it.”
“You cannot command Daemon.”
“I am asking you to choose us.”
“I am choosing you now.”
“You are barring the road.”
“If you reach Rhaenyra with a dragon, Alicent will name you an enemy. Aemond will hunt you. Vhagar is larger than Aegarax. If you remain, no one will harm you.”
“You believe you can keep that promise?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are a greater fool than I thought.”
Criston approached. You stepped back.
“Do not touch me.”
“Return to your chambers.”
“You are not my protector anymore.”
“I have never ceased protecting you.”
“You became my prison door.”
Something broke across his expression before discipline concealed it. “Then hate me from the safety of your rooms.”
He took Daella from your arms. You struck him, clawed at his armor, and tried to wrench her back. Criston endured it without retaliation. Daella began to cry. He held the child against his shoulder with one arm and caught both your wrists with the other.
“Enough,” he said.
“Give her to me.”
“When you stop.”
“She is not yours to take.”
The words wounded him. You meant them to.
Criston released your wrists. He looked down at Daella, whose small fingers had tangled in the clasp of his cloak. “No,” he said quietly. “Nothing is mine.”
He returned the child. Then he escorted you back to your prison.
At Aegon’s coronation, Criston placed the Conqueror’s iron-and-ruby crown upon the prince’s head and made him king. The commons cheered because bread and spectacle could make treason look holy. Sunfyre roared. Bells shook the city. You remained locked inside the Red Keep with Daella on your lap while Aegarax screamed beneath the Hill of Rhaenys. Before nightfall, ravens carried the news to every corner of the realm.
Criston came to you after the coronation.
“Kingmaker,” you said when he entered.
“Do not call me that.”
“It is what they shouted in the yard.”
“Aegon was crowned by law.”
“My father named Rhaenyra.”
“The realm will never accept Daemon beside the Iron Throne.”
“So you stole it for a drunken boy.”
“He is the king’s eldest son.”
“You knew that when you swore to defend Rhaenyra.”
Criston closed the door. He looked exhausted rather than triumphant. “Aegon did not want the crown.”
“That almost makes the theft noble.”
“He believed Rhaenyra would spare him. I told him the truth.”
“Your truth.”
“If she ascends, Alicent’s sons become threats merely by breathing. Daemon has killed for less.”
“And what am I?”
His gaze moved toward Daella, asleep beside the hearth. “The reason you are still alive.”
“No. I am the reason you tell yourself this was necessary.”
He left without touching either of you.
War followed. Rhaenyra crowned herself upon Dragonstone. Aemond killed Lucerys above Shipbreaker Bay and returned expecting praise. Aegon feasted him while Alicent and Otto recoiled from the stain of kinslaying. Blood and Cheese entered the Red Keep by forgotten passages and murdered little Prince Jaehaerys before his mother’s eyes. Afterward, no door felt secure. Helaena ceased eating, bathing, and looking upon her remaining children. Aegon hanged ratcatchers by the score. Otto Hightower lost the Hand’s chain, and Criston took it in his place.
The first time he came to you wearing the golden hands of office, you laughed.
“You have climbed high,” you said.
“I did not ask for this.”
“Of course not. Ambition simply keeps mistaking you for someone who wants it.”
He studied you across the chamber. Months of war had pared away what remained of the handsome tourney knight. His face was leaner. Sleeplessness bruised the skin beneath his eyes. “Rhaenyra sent no answer to the last terms.”
“Did you expect her to thank Aegon for taking her crown and Aemond for killing her son?”
“I expected her to consider the children still living.”
“You ceased thinking of Rhaenyra’s children as children years ago.”
Criston’s mouth tightened. “Where is Daella?”
“Asleep.”
“I want to see her.”
“You want many things.”
“I leave at dawn.”
Fear pierced the anger. “Where?”
“Rosby first. Duskendale after. Rook’s Rest when the road is secure.”
“You are marching to war.”
“That is generally what a Hand does when half the realm is in rebellion.”
“Do not call it rebellion.”
“I did not come to argue.”
“You always come to argue. Sometimes you remove your clothes first.”
He almost smiled, but weariness killed it. “Let me see her.”
Daella slept in the adjoining room beneath a quilt patterned with falcons. Criston removed the Hand’s chain before approaching the bed. He set it on a chest as if unwilling to carry the weight near his daughter. The child woke when he sat beside her.
“Ser Criston?”
“Were the doors locked?”
Daella glanced toward you. At your nod, she pushed herself upright and flung both arms around his neck. “Papa.”
Criston held her fiercely. His eyes closed against her hair. “Have you minded your mother?”
“Mostly.”
“That means no.”
“She would not let me see Aegarax.”
“The Dragonpit is not safe.”
“He misses me.”
“He misses your mother.”
Daella drew back. “Will you bring me something?”
“From the war?”
“Yes.”
“What does a princess want from a war?”
“I am not a princess.”
Criston went very still.
Daella had heard it from other children, perhaps from a servant. The court called Aegon’s sons princes and his daughter a princess. No such style belonged to Daella Waters.
Criston cupped her small face. “You are more than most princesses I have known.”
“Can I have a sword?”
“No,” you said.
“A small one,” Daella bargained.
Criston looked at you over her head. “A wooden sword.”
“She already has three.”
“Then a better one.”
He stayed until she slept again. In your chamber, he fastened the Hand’s chain around his neck. You watched his fingers fumble with the clasp and stepped forward to help. Neither of you spoke until it was secured.
“Rook’s Rest belongs to Lord Staunton,” you said. “He declared for Rhaenyra.”
“Yes.”
“You expect her to send a dragon.”
“Yes.”
The understanding sickened you. “It is a trap.”
“It is war.”
“You will kill one of her riders.”
“If I can.”
“And if Rhaenyra comes?”
Criston met your gaze. “Then the war may end.”
“You once swore your life to her.”
“I remember every oath I have broken.”
You slapped him. His head turned with the blow. This time, unlike the night you told him of Daella, he seized your wrist before you could strike again.
“I hate you,” you whispered.
“No, you do not.”
“I should.”
“Yes.”
He kissed you with the desperation of a man expecting death. You fought him for one breath, then gripped the front of his doublet and dragged him closer. It was not forgiveness. Nothing could forgive what lay between you. Yet his mouth was known to you, his body remembered yours, and dawn threatened to take him where grief could become permanent. Criston backed you against the wall. His forehead rested against yours.
“Say you want me to stop.”
“You know I will not.”
“That has never made it right.”
“Nothing about us was ever right.”
He kissed you again, slower now. You unfastened the chain you had just secured and let it fall to the floor. He stayed until the sky paled, though neither of you slept. When he dressed, he left the golden hands on the table.
“You forgot something,” you said.
Criston looked at the chain. “Keep it.”
“I do not want it.”
“Neither do I.”
He returned from Rook’s Rest alive. Princess Rhaenys did not. Meleys’s severed head was dragged through King’s Landing while the commons watched in fearful silence, for a dead dragon did not resemble victory as closely as the king’s men had hoped. Aegon lay burned and broken. Sunfyre remained near the battlefield, too wounded to fly. Criston had won his battle and looked like a man who had discovered victory tasted of charred flesh.
He came to Daella before reporting to Alicent. His armor smelled of smoke, horse, dried blood, and dragonfire. A burn reddened one side of his neck. Daella ran toward him, but stopped when she saw the blood.
“Is it yours?” she asked.
“Some of it.”
“Did you bring my sword?”
Criston made a sound that might have been a laugh. From his belt, he drew a small wooden sword painted white. Daella accepted it solemnly.
“You remembered.”
“I said I would.”
You waited until the child went to show her nurse. “Rhaenys?”
“Dead.”
“Meleys?”
“Dead.”
“And Aegon?”
“Living.”
“You sound disappointed.”
Criston looked toward the window. “I have seen men burned before. I have never watched armor melt into a king.”
“You arranged the trap.”
“I did.”
There was no plea in the admission. Criston did not ask you to absolve him. That, more than remorse would have done, reminded you why men followed him. He never pretended his hands were clean.
Aemond took the regency and placed the iron-and-ruby crown upon his own head while his brother drifted through milk of the poppy. Criston marched again, this time with Aemond and Vhagar, leaving King’s Landing exposed in pursuit of Daemon. Before his departure, he gave you a knife small enough to hide beneath your skirts and told you which postern would remain guarded by men loyal to him.
“If the city falls, take Daella and go south,” he said. “At the Mud Gate, ask for a woman named Mara Cole. She sells onions near the river. She is my father’s cousin.”
“You have family in King’s Landing?”
“I brought her here after Daella was born. She does not know everything, but she knows enough.”
“You planned an escape for us while preventing every attempt I made.”
“I planned for a day when escape offered more safety than remaining.”
“You always believe you alone can decide that.”
“I have usually been right.”
“You are insufferable.”
“I am alive.”
“For now.”
Criston glanced toward Daella, who was playing near the hearth. “If I do not return, Mara will take her to Blackhaven. My father may still be living. Lord Dondarrion has no love for me, but he is not a man who murders children.”
“You speak as if I will not be with her.”
“You will.”
“Say it as though you believe it.”
He could not.
You caught his arm before he turned away. “Choose us this time.”
“I am trying.”
“No. You are riding after another prince with another army. You are choosing war again.”
“If Aemond kills Daemon, the Blacks lose their greatest weapon. If we retake Harrenhal, Rhaenyra’s cause may collapse.”
“And then?”
“I come back.”
“To do what? Keep me locked here while Aegon feeds my sister to Sunfyre?”
Criston’s face hardened. “Do not ask me to choose between you.”
“I already did. You chose the crown.”
“I chose a realm where Daella might live.”
“You made the realm where she is in danger.”
Daella looked up at the sound of her name. Both of you fell silent.
Criston knelt. The child came to him, wooden sword in hand. He adjusted her grip, closing her fingers around the hilt.
“Not too tight,” he told her. “A rigid hand tires quickly.”
“Will you teach me when you return?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
Criston looked at you.
“Promise her,” you said.
He kissed Daella’s brow. “I promise.”
He left without saying farewell to you.
Rhaenyra took King’s Landing less than a moon later. With Aemond, Vhagar, and Criston absent, the city’s defenses crumbled. Gold cloaks still loyal to Daemon opened gates. Queen Alicent was seized. Aegon vanished with his children. You awoke to bells, shouting, and the thunder of dragons above the city. Syrax circled the Red Keep while Caraxes roared from the walls. Guards abandoned your door. You dressed Daella, took Criston’s knife, and prepared to reach Aegarax.
Rhaenyra found you first.
Your sister entered the chamber wearing black armor and a crown, Daemon at her side. She was heavier than when she had left court, her face marked by grief and childbirth, but nothing had dimmed the force of her presence. This was not the laughing girl who carried you through corridors. It was the queen who had lost sons, a throne, and any remaining belief that blood alone guaranteed loyalty.
For one heartbeat you saw your sister.
Then Rhaenyra saw Daella.
“You are alive,” she said.
“No thanks to those who held us.”
Her gaze moved over your face. “They told me you refused to declare for either side.”
“I was locked in these rooms.”
“You signed a letter urging me to yield.”
“Alicent threatened my child.”
Daemon closed the door behind him. His eyes rested upon Daella with predatory interest. “And who is the child’s father?”
When you were alone, Rhaenyra removed her crown and set it on the table. “I asked Father to let you come to Dragonstone.”
“I know.”
“He said you wished to remain.”
“He lied.”
Pain moved through her face. “I believed him.”
“You found it convenient to.”
“I had children, a husband, enemies on every side.”
“And I had nothing?”
“You had a dragon.”
“Chained beneath this city.”
Rhaenyra looked toward Daella again. The child had Criston’s pale green eyes that day. There was no violet visible around them.
“Does he live?” your sister asked.
You did not answer.
Her stare sharpened. “Criston.”
Hearing the name spoken aloud felt like a blade entering the room.
Rhaenyra stepped nearer. “It is him.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Seven hells.”
“You will not touch Daella.”
“That creature crowned Aegon.”
“She is four.”
“He murdered Joffrey. He crippled Harwin. He hunted my supporters, set the crown on my brother’s head, and helped burn Rhaenys alive.”
“I know what he has done.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“And you loved him?”
The question carried old poison. Whatever had passed between them had not faded. It had merely acquired more corpses.
“I do,” you said.
Rhaenyra recoiled as though you had struck her. “All these years.”
“All these years.”
“He made you their hostage.”
“He also kept them from killing me.”
“For his own use.”
“Do not speak as if you know him.”
“I knew him before you were old enough to understand what he wanted.”
“You knew what he was to you. That is not the same.”
Rhaenyra’s cheeks flushed darkly. For a moment you thought she might call the guards. Instead, she looked at Daella and seemed to see the child properly for the first time.
“She has his eyes.”
“She has mine too.”
“If Daemon learns this, he will use her.”
“Then do not tell him.”
“Why should I protect Cole’s bastard?”
“Because she is Aemma’s granddaughter.”
The name silenced her.
Rhaenyra returned the crown to her head. “You will remain in the Red Keep until this war ends.”
You almost laughed. “So I have changed gaolers.”
“It is for your protection.”
“That is what Criston said.”
Hatred flashed across her face. “Do not compare me to him.”
“You have both locked the same door.”
Rhaenyra forbade you from flying Aegarax. She claimed every dragon might soon be needed, yet she placed guards around the cavern and ordered the keepers not to remove his chains. You were permitted to visit, always watched. Aegarax had grown savage during the war. He snapped at strangers and scorched the stone whenever soldiers approached. Only your touch quieted him. You pressed your body against the warm scales beneath his jaw, murmuring in High Valyrian while his golden eyes followed every guard.
Rhaenyra’s reign decayed around you. Lord Celtigar imposed taxes that emptied purses and filled the streets with resentment. Heads appeared above the gates. Ser Tyland Lannister was given to the torturers. The smallfolk cursed dragons, kings, queens, and every silver-haired child who ate while their own families starved. The Shepherd preached that the beasts were demons and their riders abominations. Helaena fell from Maegor’s Holdfast onto the spikes below. Whether grief, murder, or despair sent her through the window, no one could prove. The city answered with riot.
News of Criston’s death reached the Red Keep before the mobs gathered at Cobbler’s Square. The report came from the riverlands: surrounded south of the Gods Eye, he had offered to fight three enemy commanders in single combat. They refused him. Three arrows struck him, and his men were slaughtered. His head was said to have been carried on a spear.
You read the message twice. Then a third time. The letters remained unchanged.
Daella found you beside the cold hearth.
“Is Papa coming back?” she asked.
You folded the parchment. “No.”
“He promised.”
“I know.”
“Papa does not break promises.”
You could not tell her that Criston had built his life from broken vows. You pulled her onto your lap and held her while she demanded answers that did not exist.
That night Aegarax screamed beneath the city until blood ran from the mouths of two dragonkeepers.
The Storming of the Dragonpit began the following evening.
From the Red Keep, the Hill of Rhaenys appeared crowned in flame. Bells rang without rhythm. Thousands of voices merged into a roar that rolled across the city like the sea. Men and women armed with axes, spears, butcher’s hooks, hammers, and rusted swords surged toward the Dragonpit. The Shepherd’s lambs believed the Seven would protect them. The dragons taught them otherwise.
You felt the first death through Aegarax.
Pain tore across your chest so violently that you fell against the window. Daella screamed your name. Far across the city, fire erupted from the Dragonpit’s entrances. Shrykos died beneath blades and axes. Morghul burned scores before a spear entered her eye. Tyraxes became tangled in his chain and was hacked apart by men who continued striking after the dragon’s death had already crushed those nearest him. Dreamfyre broke loose, wounded and maddened, and hurled herself against the great dome until stone collapsed upon dragon and mob alike.
Aegarax fought from the deepest cavern. His chain had been shortened so often that he could not reach the doors. Through the bond between you, the world became heat, blood, and blind fury. You felt iron biting into his leg. You smelled men burning inside armor. A spear entered the soft flesh beneath his jaw. Another tore through the red membrane of his wing. He called for you, not in words, but with the same desperate need that had driven him beneath your blankets as a hatchling.
You tried to reach him.
Guards blocked the stair. One caught you around the waist while another tore Criston’s knife from your hand. Daella clung to your skirts. You fought until the pommel of a sword struck your temple and the corridor spun.
“My dragon is dying!”
“The queen has ordered everyone kept inside.”
“He is chained!”
The guard looked away.
Aegarax wrenched against the iron until bone cracked. The chain held. Men swarmed beneath him. His fire filled the cavern, consuming flesh, banners, straw, and old dragon dung. A crossbow bolt vanished into his golden eye. The agony drove you to your knees.
Then the roof fell.
Aegarax died with your name inside him.
The silence left behind was worse than pain. Something that had lived beside your soul since infancy simply ceased. You vomited on the stones. Daella wrapped both arms around you while the Dragonpit burned bright enough to make midnight resemble dawn.
The Red Keep began emptying before sunrise. Rhaenyra meant to flee for Dragonstone. Her remaining guards seized chests of coin, clothing, jewels, and royal records while servants stole whatever could be carried. No one came for you. Whether your sister intended to take you or abandon you could no longer matter. The castle gates had opened. Gold cloaks were deserting. Mobs filled the streets.
Your chamber door opened while you were tying a cloak around Daella.
The man who entered wore a black mantle over battered plate. Blood had dried along one side of his throat. His beard had grown unevenly. One arm was bound against his chest, and fever hollowed his cheeks.
You drew the knife hidden beneath your sleeve.
Criston pushed back his hood.
For several breaths, neither of you moved.
Daella saw him first. “Papa?”
Criston’s face crumpled.
She ran. He dropped to one knee and caught her with his good arm. The force nearly toppled him. Daella clung to his neck, laughing and crying at once.
“You came back,” she said. “I told Mother you promised.”
Criston buried his face in her hair. “I promised.”
You could only stare. “They said you were dead.”
“They were close.”
“Your head was on a spear.”
“Someone’s head was.”
He rose with difficulty. Beneath the black mantle, his armor was pierced at the belly. Dried blood covered the plates. A broken arrowhead remained lodged near his shoulder.
“What happened?”
“The archers loosed before I finished speaking. One shaft struck my gorget. Another glanced from the breastplate. The third entered below the ribs.” His voice was rough. “I fell. Bodies covered me when the fighting began. Two men pulled me free after dark.”
“Your army?”
“Gone.”
“And you came here?”
“I spent six days unable to sit a horse. After that, yes.”
“Why?”
Criston looked at you as if the answer ought to have been obvious. “For you.”
Anger arrived before relief could soften it. You struck his chest with both hands. He staggered but remained upright.
“You came now?”
“I came as quickly as I could.”
“You left us in this castle. You chose Aegon, Aemond, the Hand’s chain, and every damned battle. Now the city is burning, my dragon is dead, and you come crawling from beneath a pile of corpses expecting what?”
“Nothing.”
“You promised her.”
“I know.”
“You promised me nothing.”
“I knew I could not keep it.”
You struck him again. Criston caught your wrists, but there was little strength left in his grip.
“I hate you,” you said.
“I know.”
“No, you do not. I hated you every time the lock turned. I hated you when Aegon wore the crown. I hated you when they brought Meleys’s head through the streets. I hated you when the raven said you were dead.”
Criston’s eyes shone. “I know.”
“I waited for you anyway.”
“I know.”
He pulled you against him. The armor beneath his mantle was cold and sticky with reopened blood. You buried your face against his neck, breathing leather, sweat, smoke, and the scent you had believed gone from the world. Criston held you and Daella together, one arm around his daughter and the wounded other braced across your back.
“The river,” he said after a moment. “Mara waits near the Mud Gate with a boat. We can reach the lower passage before Rhaenyra’s men seal it.”
“Rhaenyra is fleeing.”
“Then we go before the city chooses another ruler.”
“To Blackhaven?”
“If the roads south remain open. If not, Duskendale, then Pentos.”
“You would leave Westeros?”
His mouth twisted. “I have lost my king, my army, my office, and most of my blood. Pride is becoming expensive.”
“You forgot your honor.”
“No. I lost that years ago.”
Criston kissed you. There was no anger in it, no struggle for command, and no secrecy left worth preserving. Daella stood between you, clutching both your garments. The castle could have fallen around you and for one heartbeat it would not have mattered.
“I should have gone with you when you asked,” he whispered.
“At the passage?”
“Before Daella. Before any of this.”
“You would have hated exile.”
“I hated myself here.”
“That is not the same.”
“No.”
“You cannot mend five years with one regret.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It is all I have left.”
You touched the blood dried beneath his jaw. “Then get us out.”
The three of you entered the hidden stair while the Red Keep descended into panic. Criston carried Daella despite his wounds. You led with the knife. Smoke drifted through cracks in the walls. Somewhere above, men shouted that the queen had departed. Somewhere below, a door splintered and a woman screamed.
The passage opened behind a tapestry near the armory. Two dead guards lay in the gallery. Their cloaks were black, their throats cut. Criston took a sword from one and tested its balance.
“Stay behind me.”
“You have one working arm.”
“One is enough.”
“It was not enough at the Gods Eye.”
“I survived.”
“Barely.”
“Stay behind me.”
You almost laughed. Even half dead, stripped of crown and command, he remained impossible.
They recognized him in the lower yard.
A dozen men in mismatched armor had gathered near the postern, some belonging to Rhaenyra’s household, others to the city watch. One stared at the bloodstained plate beneath Criston’s mantle.
“White armor,” the man said.
Criston kept walking.
Another lifted a torch. Light struck his face. “Seven save us. It’s Cole.”
Swords left scabbards.
Criston placed Daella in your arms. “When I open the gate, run.”
“You cannot fight them.”
“I do not require permission.”
The first man rushed him. Criston moved with none of his former elegance, but experience remained after strength failed. He turned aside the descending blade and drove his sword beneath the man’s chin. Another came from the left. Criston caught the strike upon his wounded arm, grunted, and opened the attacker from hip to ribs. Blood sprayed across his white armor.
“Kingmaker!” someone shouted.
More men entered the yard.
You ran for the postern. The gate was barred. You set Daella down and hauled at the beam. It did not move. Criston fought behind you, boots slipping on wet stone. He killed a third man and lost his sword inside the body. A spear glanced along his backplate. He tore the weapon from its owner and struck with the butt, crushing the man’s mouth.
“Mother!” Daella screamed.
You turned.
A crossbowman stood upon the gallery.
He aimed at Criston.
You moved before thought could stop you.
The bolt entered beneath your collarbone and drove through your back.
There was no pain at first, only impact. The courtyard tilted. You sat down hard upon the stones, puzzled by the sudden weakness in your legs. Daella’s face appeared above you. Her mouth opened, but the ringing in your ears swallowed the sound.
Criston killed the crossbowman.
You did not see how. One moment the man stood above the gallery rail, and the next he fell into the yard with Criston’s spear through his chest. Criston reached you before the body struck the ground.
“No,” he said.
Blood filled your mouth when you tried to breathe.
“No. No, look at me.”
“I am looking.”
He pressed his hand around the bolt. His face had become the frightened face of the young knight who first held his daughter, the man beneath every title and crime.
“You cannot pull it out,” you said.
“I know.”
“Then stop touching it.”
“I can carry you.”
“You can barely carry yourself.”
“We are leaving together.”
“Criston.”
He looked at the blood spreading beneath you. Denial collapsed.
Daella knelt beside your head. “Mother, get up.”
You reached for her. Your fingers left a red mark upon her cheek.
“Listen to Papa.”
The child began sobbing. “You said Ser Criston outside.”
“No need now.”
Criston bowed over you. “Do not.”
“You came back for her.”
“For both of you.”
“You came too late for me.”
“I will not leave you here.”
“You will if you ever loved me.”
His eyes closed. A tear slipped through the dirt on his cheek.
“Take her to Mara,” you whispered. “Take her where no one knows what blood she has.”
“I cannot do this without you.”
“You have done everything without me.”
“That was the ruin of it.”
“Then do this right.”
The sounds beyond the yard grew louder. The mob had reached the outer walls. Bells rang above the city. Smoke veiled the paling sky.
Criston leaned down and kissed you. His mouth trembled. You tasted blood, though you no longer knew whether it belonged to him or to you.
“I loved you,” he said.
“You still do.”
“Yes.”
“Then go.”
He lifted Daella. The child fought, reaching for you over his shoulder.
“Mother!”
Criston staggered toward the postern.
The beam had loosened. He put his back against it and forced it upward with a cry torn from somewhere beneath his wounds. The gate opened enough for him to drag Daella through. He looked back once.
You watched him leave.
The last thing you saw was the ruined white cloak beneath his black mantle and your daughter’s small hand stretched toward you.
Criston carried Daella into a city gone mad. The child screamed until grief exhausted her voice. Streets burned. Men dragged corpses from houses. The Shepherd’s followers staggered from the Dragonpit blackened by flame, praising the Seven while melted flesh hung from their bones. Others proclaimed new kings in alleys and squares. The gold cloaks had ceased pretending to hold order. Criston kept to the narrow ways, his sword in one hand and Daella pressed against his wounded side.
At the foot of Aegon’s High Hill, three men tried to take the child. The first believed her silver-black hair meant ransom. The second recognized Criston. The third wanted only the sword.
Criston killed all three.
The effort opened the wound beneath his ribs. Blood poured through the gap in his armor and soaked Daella’s tunic. He continued toward the Mud Gate.
Mara Cole waited beneath a torn awning beside the river, an old woman with Criston’s pale eyes and a knife hidden among baskets of onions. A fishing boat knocked against the quay behind her.
When she saw him, she crossed herself. “Gods be good.”
“They have not been,” Criston said.
“Where is the princess?”
He did not answer.
Mara looked at Daella and understood.
“Take her south,” Criston said. “Not by the kingsroad. Find my father if he lives. If Blackhaven is unsafe, cross into Dorne. If Dorne is closed, sell the jewels sewn into her cloak and take ship from Weeping Town.”
“You can tell me aboard.”
Criston shook his head.
“You crossed half the realm with an arrow in your guts. You can cross a river.”
Men appeared at the end of the street. Some wore black cloaks. Others carried the seven-pointed star of the Shepherd. One pointed toward the bloodstained knight.
Criston set Daella in the boat.
She caught his hand. “Come with us.”
He removed the white cloak from beneath the dark mantle. Once it had been snowy wool and heavy silk. Now it was torn, burned, and brown with old blood. Criston wrapped it around his daughter.
“This will keep you warm.”
“You promised to teach me.”
“I know.”
“You promised.”
Criston kissed her brow. “Forgive me.”
Mara seized the oars. The boat drifted from the quay.
Criston turned to face the street.
The men came in greater numbers than he could count. He had no lord to command, no king to crown, no army waiting for his orders. The white cloak was gone. The Hand’s chain lay in a chamber that might already be burning. His sword arm was failing, blood filled one boot, and every breath ground the arrowhead deeper beneath his ribs.
Still, he stood between the mob and the river until the boat vanished into smoke.
They killed him within sight of the Mud Gate. It took six men. One opened his wounded belly with a hooked blade. Another drove a spear beneath his arm. Criston remained upright long enough to break the spearman’s neck. He fell only when a sword entered the gap above his gorget, in almost the same place where an arrow had failed to kill him beside the Gods Eye.
No songs were sung for him.
Daella survived.
Mara took her south by river and road, hiding her silver-black hair beneath brown dye and calling her a dead soldier’s orphan. Lord Dondarrion permitted the girl to remain at Blackhaven once the worst of the war had passed, though he never acknowledged whose blood she carried. In the marches she became Daella Cole, not Waters and never Targaryen. She learned the sword with her right hand, rode horses too fierce for larger children, and kept a ragged piece of white wool hidden beneath her mattress. She remembered a mother with violet eyes, a father in bloodstained armor, and a grey dragon screaming beneath a burning hill. She remembered enough.
The maesters never joined your name to Criston’s. They never entered Daella among the descendants of King Viserys and Queen Aemma. To history, the Kingmaker died childless, his white cloak stained by ambition and the blood of the Dance. You became a lesser tragedy in a war overflowing with them, a princess lost during the fall of King’s Landing, your bastard daughter presumed dead beside you.
History was wrong.
The crown destroyed both of you. The war took your dragon, your sister, his honor, and every future you might have shared. Yet the child you made in secrecy lived beyond it all, carrying the blood of the dragon and the steward’s son into a world that never learned enough to hunt her.
In the end, that was the only promise Criston Cole managed to keep.
"Rhaenyra is a Cunning Spider. Long ago she drew Alicent into her web. Intoxicated her." And then we get Ser Criston in view of a spider's web well, well, well...how the turn tables.
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